A driver may cause a vehicle to undergo a hard turn, a quick turn, or a series of hard and quick turns when encountering various driving conditions and situations. Such conditions can be experienced during high speed maneuvers, which may occur on freeway entrance ramps, merging lanes and the like. Quick maneuvers also can occur to avoid accidents or objects in the roadway. When experiencing a hard, quick turn the vehicle body tends to elevate on one side and lower on the opposite side very suddenly. This condition is referred to as vehicle body roll. High profile vehicles such as trucks, sports utility vehicles, vans, all-terrain vehicles (ATV's) and the like experience roll conditions more readily than lower profile vehicles, such as passenger cars.
A variety of suspension and stabilizer systems have been used on vehicles of all types to improve passenger comfort and driving stability. Primary suspension system components can include springs and/or dampers providing spring force to suspend the vehicle body, controlling a single wheel assembly and movement relative to the vehicle frame. Primary suspension systems provide only minimal resistance to vehicle body roll.
Roll stabilizer systems provide spring force to return the vehicle body to a neutral position or condition when forces from sudden vehicle movements have caused the body to lean one direction or another. Accordingly, stabilizer systems operate to return the vehicle body from a roll condition to a neutral condition. Several types of stabilizer systems are known.
Torsion bar stabilizer systems have a stabilizer bar as a tension spring and links in series attached to the primary suspension system and vehicle frame. Single compensating stabilizer systems have one anti-roll compensator attached to the primary suspension via a bell crank or the like on each control arm. A dual compensating linear stabilizer system has two anti-roll compensators attached to the primary suspension with two bell cranks on each control arm, with each compensator attached to an upper bell crank on one control arm and to a lower bell crank on the other control arm.
Stabilizer systems as described have achieved acceptance and operate effectively to return the vehicle to a neutral condition when vehicle body roll has been experienced.
For typical street and highway driving conditions it is desirable that a stabilizer system be always operating. However, off-road vehicles, including trucks, ATV's and the like, can be operated in severe terrain wherein one or more wheel may be severely displaced with respect to the other wheels at slow speeds. Commonly, operation in the most severe terrain conditions is performed at low speeds. It is desirable in some situations to operate without a stabilizer system. Without the stabilizer, the wheels and body can move naturally without interference or resistance from spring members in the stabilizer system. However, these same vehicles also may be operated on highways or in other high speed conditions. The high profiles of such vehicles can result in the vehicle being more prone to roll than other vehicles. Accordingly, it is desirable that such vehicles have stabilizer systems for such high speed operation; however, operation of the stabilizer system during off-road maneuvers may be undesirable. Disconnecting or removing stabilizer systems when vehicles are taken off road has been difficult and time consuming.
Accordingly, what is needed is a stabilizer system that can be decoupled or re-coupled quickly and easily, to be active or inactive as the operator desires.